Steve Schnur

Talking to Electronic Arts' President of Music Steve Schnur was the highlight of my week, and I'm not even a gamer! It made me excited about music. It made me envy his job. Listen and you'll get excited too! (And learn plenty!)

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob Left Sets podcast.
My guest today is Steve Schnur. Steve, what exactly is
your title of electronic arts? I think the last time
we spoke you were laughing, commenting, joking with me about
how long it was at the time. So I'm frankly

(00:29):
partially because of that conversation years ago. It's some sat
Bislas event. I shortened it to president of music. There
was a lot of word their global Jedi sort of thing,
but president of music and what do you do as
president of music? Uh? Well, I I say that every

(00:49):
I'm responsible ultimately for every single note that goes in
every single game, every single trailer, every artist that shows
up at every single event. Anybody who's you knowsociated with music,
whether it's Snoop showing up at the launch of a
battlefield event or whether it's them you know, a hundred
songs that go in a FIFA. UM, I'm responsible ultimately

(01:11):
for for all of it. I UM. I think over
the years, UM, we used to sort of look at,
you know, how do we how do we represent culture?
And I think what we've tried to do now is actually,
um become culture. You know, to the point where these
playlists and these um pieces of music we put in

(01:31):
all of these franchises are so meaningful to people now. Um,
going back the last ten twenty years, so long winded
way to say, I guess I'm in charge of all
of that. And why do you live in Nashville. I'm
glad we have some time here. Listen. I lived in
Nashville in the nineties, all of my friends. In nine

(01:53):
five when I worked for Clive uh when I told
him I was thinking about coming down here and running
a record label for Tim Dubon Mike Dungan, which was
a blessing. But who knew at the time. Um, they
said I was crazy. Um they don't let Jews in Nashville.
Oh my god, you're gonna be you know, ha ha
ha Uh. It was the most amazing time of my

(02:16):
life working for those guys back then. Uh. So when
I moved to l A, initially to work at Capital,
but then for years to work um eddie A. You know,
I always figured how do I get back? Um, it
just seems like a more normal place to me. It's
also closer for me to get home to New York.

(02:38):
I like that. I like that I'm centrally located. The
answer to your question is that, UM, I tried knowing
that games. Uh. We were always told way back when
that we were bigger than the film industry and the
music industry combined. But when I started, we still sounded

(02:58):
like the toy industry. And even though there's nostalgia in
the Mario Brothers and pac Man, UM, I needed to
find a solution so we could record live with real orchestras.
If I'm gonna hire Hans Zimmer and I'm gonna hire
a hilder off of an Oscar Win, you know I
have provided them with some great orchestrash. We had a fallout,

(03:22):
you know, we had a fallout, not just e A,
the entire non signatory industry had a fallout with the
A f M UM. We were able to record for
years in UM in Los Angeles and a non signatory
single performance Agreement UM. And when the new guys came
in to run it, I warned them kindly that they

(03:45):
were gonna lose not just the entire game industry, but
they were gonna learn lose the independent film industry. They
were gonna lose you know what what you know inevitably
came the TV business, you know, Netflix, Amazon, none of
these modern media companies, We're going to become union signatories.
And they were gonna lose all of this business to

(04:06):
Eastern Europe. That's where everybody was gonna go to prag Bratoslava,
you know, etcetera. Um, And so it happened. And I
was the one knowing this town pretty well from living
here in the nineties that said, let's go see if
we can cut a trailer in Nashville. I know the
steel players, I know the drummers, I know the guitar players.
Not sure if I know the cellist, but let's try it.

(04:29):
But guess what, um, mind blowing, mind blowing horn sections
as you can only imagine, think of all the great
horn horne arranged, horn arrangements. They came out of here
for years and years and years, and I ended up
recording a score to a game called Dragon Age Inquisition here.

(04:49):
I had a very loud mouth among the composer community
in Los Angeles, from Hans to John Debney, you name,
and it it goes on and on and on and next
thing you know, people were coming year to record and
their minds were blown. So I think Nashville has become
easily the top one of the top two greatest places

(05:10):
to record orchestra for film television in games, London being
the other. Uh. And I think the stages sadly in
Los Angeles have emptied the musicians, so many of them
are out of work, a lot of them are moving here,
and so rather than commute back and forth, I figured
it would make sense for me to plant my butt

(05:31):
here in Nashville and to help further and build the
community um of you know, great orchestral recording for media. Um. Now,
I've spoken to the guy who's the chairman of the
tourism board and told him, the next time you're you
have that tour bus driving down Music Row and you

(05:52):
tell the blue haired ladies that this is the studio
where Johnny Cash and Elvis recorded. Two blocks down is
the studio where Call of Duty and Fortnite was recorded.
Every kid's going to freak out and want to go
with our moms and those tours. Now, so we've built
one hell of a community down here, um. And that's
why I live here now. And you know, it's a
commute to l A, but it's no big deal. And Frankly,

(06:14):
half the time, my flight is shorter than half the
people that work for me and have to drive from
Eagle Rock to Marina del Rey. Okay, just going sideways
for a second. Your father was recently ill. If you're
from the East Coast, how's your father being treated in Irvine? Well,
my dad saw the light of California twenty years ago
and moved to uh Orange County. Um, proclaiming he had

(06:38):
wished we had he had moved us out there, uh
when when we were kids. But I'm a Jersey slash
New York City divorce bratt and you know this, Bob,
you can't take that out of us. We are who
we are. We just bring New York with us to California. UM. So,
my dad's been living out there for twenty years. I
do think it's the greatest thing he could have done

(07:00):
for himself. Um. Who wants to be, you know, in
their nineties, little one, even in their seventies and shoveling snow.
I think you've written about this quite a lot. You know,
he was a Vermont drive to Vermont, go skiing, come
back to Jersey, go to work, and finally twenty years ago,
he's like I'm done. He didn't do the Florida route.
He did the California route. Okay, I gotta go here

(07:24):
because I tell this story all the time. Do you
still have your condo in Mammoth? No? I mean this
is fin finance mistake one oh one. When the recession hit, Okay,
the thing went severely underwater, and I did a panic
and I sold it and I called the financial guy

(07:44):
at Mary Lynch and I said, I'm about to, you know,
do one of those the bank wants you? Am? I
actually gonna sell it for way under the mortgage? And
what does that do to my credit? And they said,
just get out, get out, get out. It'll take you
fifteen twenty years to get back to where you bought it.
So I sold it now. I got divorced, so I
would have lost it anyway, So what the hell? Okay,

(08:08):
but the story that I tell is you were renting
it out and what ultimately happened with the Golden Platinum Records.
Why don't you tell us? You remember this? It's fantastic.
So I had this idea, you know that if I
rented it out, you know, how am I going to
compete in that Mammoth marketplace. First of all, you're hiring

(08:29):
a property manager at a fifty fifty split, which is
absolutely the stupidest thing imaginable, but that's the way it's done.
So I remember taking all of these golden platinum records,
putting them up on the wall. We had a view
from the living room of Mammoth Rocks. So I said, okay,
well let's call it, you know, Mammoth whatever it was,

(08:49):
Mammoth Rock dot com or whatever. I thought I was
so smart to get at the time, but I really
was a little you know, being an East Coaster, I
was cynical about it from day one. So I figured,
how do I get these platinum records on the wall
without somebody just lifting them off? So I had them
mounted to the wall like they used to do with
the hard rock in Las Vegas. You know, they're mounted
from behind. It would take a superman to rip it

(09:11):
off the wall. Only to come up there one time
and found out there were holes in the wall. Somebody
had rented my place, shown up with a crowbar and
just basically ripped them out. And so when I went
to the property manager, remember fifty fifty split, you think
they do more? Um, I told them, and they said, well,
we've had three people in there, so we don't know

(09:31):
who to go to. So sorry. So yeah, that was
my uh hard earned lesson in not really renting things
out on a weekly basis and having high expectations when
it comes to maintaining. UM, you know it was. It
was a high quality place. But it is what it is.
I lost a blink quantity to um Platinum Record and

(09:54):
a couple others, but you know what it is, what
it is. I kind of don't listen to blink anyway anymore. Anyway,
how many did you lose all in total? It had
to be five or six that they were. There were
five or six holes in the wall, good gigantic you know,
six inch circumference holes in the wall. This person literally
went out of their way to getting it. I don't

(10:15):
know why I looked on eBay. Uh they never showed up.
So okay, let's go back something you said earlier. Explain
the A f M union situation. Well, listen, I'm a
union person, ironically, and I believe there's a purpose, particularly
for the pension paying into the pension when you use

(10:38):
union musicians. Um, but I do believe, uh, and I'm
not running for office here to run the union. But
I do believe that the union works through the musicians
and not the other way around. And if you go
back to the history of the particularly the a f
M to the forties, I think the guy who ran
back then was a guy named Fiarello. I could be

(11:00):
his name, and Um, you know, we could look back
and think of him as a tough s ob who
got shipped done. But the truth is he was abusive
and he was um. He got in the way of progress.
He was so upset as far as I know, and

(11:21):
I've learned with musicians being replied, musicians being replaced on
radio by recorded music, that he went out of his
way to shut it down. He did not accept technology
and or technology has brought us as a music industry
for the last hundred years. We have to ride the

(11:42):
technology wave, not try to shut it down. Otherwise, I e. Napster,
We're just wasting years where we could be a part
of it. UM. And I think, you know, I think
the current union UM is in the same situation. Um.
You can come to Nashville and do union recordings. The
only difference is that Nashville is a right to work state.

(12:04):
So the union members can't be sued for making their
own decision on whether they want to work on a
project or not. By the way, when I put out
the call two musicians, the greatest musicians in town, no
one's ever said no. But they have a choice. So, UM,
I hope you know union members musicians understand that. UM,

(12:29):
many of us, most of us who work for you know,
companies that aren't signatories to the union. And that's most companies. Now. Remember,
the people that are really still signatories are the ones
that signed it back in the Charlie Chaplain era, Warner Brothers, Disney,
Paramount and this goes back lord knows how long. But
a lot of Netflix, the majority of their projects are

(12:50):
non union projects. So why not try to get the
business here in the US rather than lose the business
to Eastern Europe? Why not try to figure out ways
to work with companies? UM, And I think Nashville has
become an incredible solution. I mean, you know, Spike Lee
does you know records uh music for his movies here

(13:13):
with you know, and and and the list goes on
and on. I mean Lost in Space on Netflix was
all all that score was recorded here, And like I said,
so many games, Um, not my games, even some of
them call a Duty and Fortnite and others. So it's
become a high quality solution. And there's not a day,
Bob that I don't go out to lunch or dinner

(13:35):
here when somebody who plays cello or a tuba or
whatever the case may be comes up to me because
it's Nashville, still a small town and says thank you,
thank you for letting us work six days a week,
you know, And UM, I'm not doing it for that.
I make no money from that. I don't know in
the studios, I have no personal financial incentive. I just

(13:57):
know that we, you know, in the modern media business
needs solutions to have high quality recordings with the best
musicians of the world and not be driven out and
forced to go to places like Prague and and uh
you know other places in Eastern Europe where there's problems.
You have to edit the hell out of those. Um recordings. Um,

(14:20):
the musicianship is good, but it's not mind blowing at times.
Most of the time. UM, I'll tell you a funny story.
My friend John Julihan, I don't know if you know him. Um,
he was here doing the film that they did about
a year or two ago on Tammy Faye Baker. Um,
and uh, he asked me to help put together a
horn section because guess what it was, um, a non

(14:43):
union film, you know. Um and uh I got to
I put together a horn section for him. And he
came down and Dave Cobb, who I think you know, um,
was recording it producing it. And John looked at me
and said, oh my god, I can't believe these horns.
I'm they're playing this, these these parts just like that's

(15:03):
just like the original records. And then one of the
trumpet players said, and that's because we were the guys
that actually played on that record. So listen, you've got
a swinging brass section here that's incredible. You have string
sections that are as good as London, which is a tall,
tall order. And uh. The only thing we're short of

(15:25):
here in town is a magnificent stage the size of
Abbey Road one. We can put about seventy five on
the floor at Ocean Way, you know. So for me
where I do Star Wars and I need a hundred
plus people on the stage, I go to London for
those things. But we've come up with a solution for

(15:46):
three industries. And you know I said from day one,
I always wanted to pay into the pension, you know,
for the union. I believe in it as long as
they handled the pension correctly. Um. But um, my home,
my thing is that I just don't want them hurting
the musicians. I don't want them suing the musicians. And

(16:06):
this is a place where musicians work. They work six
seven days a week doing what they do. They don't
have to work at Jerry's Deli or any place like
that to make it. You know, they have a lot
of work here now in film and TV and games. Okay,
let's just assume, for the sake of discussion, you were
a signatory and you did cut in l A. What

(16:28):
would be the difference to you. Yeah, that's a great question. Um, well,
I'll tell you what it's not. It's not a matter
of cost, because people think this is a cost solution,
which it's not. You know, listen, there's a set rate here,
set right there. Um. If I were a signatory and
I cut there, Um, I would have some of the

(16:50):
greatest stages in the planet, the barber strikes and stage
you know this, and that I would have some of
the greatest musicians in the planet. Um and the different
says now sadly, thanks to the Union, I would have
a lot of dates at these stages to choose from
because they're empty a lot of days of the month.
Abbey Road is sold out two years already now in advance.

(17:11):
You can't even get in there until uh Nashville's about
six months eight months. Um, So why is that happening?
Why are there empty stages there when it's not a
matter of cost, you know? Um? So, we did amazing
scores in Los Angeles. Michael Jaquino did our Medal of

(17:32):
Honor scores back way back when we did lots of
SIMS scores back then with Mark mothers Bow and Steve Jablonsky.
I'm really proud of those scores. The quality is incredible.
But unfortunately we're driven out. When I say we, I
mean an industry was driven out. So you gotta you
gotta come. If it's not the cost, what is the
burden of the union production? I see what you're saying.

(17:58):
You're asking me. Why are you asking me why modern
media companies are in signatories to the union. Yeah, let's
go there, I think, yeah, um, and I usually don't
go there, but I know you, so I'm gonna go here. Um, listen,
there's back end, and you know there's back end for musicians,
and most companies Amazon, Netflix, Activision, the list goes on.

(18:22):
You know. UM, they're different, they're set up differently than
the old traditional major movie studios. UM, there's no back end.
But there's also not back end, by the way, for
the executive producer or the director or the other people
that have worked on a UM project like a game
for three years. And so it's pretty hard to justify

(18:45):
not giving an executive producer who's worked on a game
for three years and then giving back end to a
violinist who worked on a game for three hours. That's
kind of an equation that doesn't work out very well.
So that's it. It comes down to back end. And
that's why most companies now, like I said, Netflix and

(19:05):
others are not signators. So how did you get your
gig dy a And what was the status of the
music department? Then there wasn't a music department. There wasn't
a music department in any game company. I was working
at Capitol Records. UM. I had left at Nashville to
move to capital be one of the guys that ran

(19:26):
and r um roy Lot left. As you'll recall, Andy
Slater came in. Um. It was a miserable environment, to
be honest with you. Um and Uh. Fortunately, at the
same time as I was a capital UM, I was
also music supervising films, particularly Sandra Bullock films. I had

(19:48):
done the music supervision for a smaller film called Gunshot,
but then a much bigger film called Miss Congeniality. I
also was able to write cues on that, which I
always joke when I get might BM, I check every
single year. Uh we can go to Nobu once, but
that's about what it can afford. Um and uh there's
your back end story by the way. Um. But um

(20:11):
and then I so I had I didn't realize that
I had this experience, for lack of better term, in
music and music supervision. I sort of took it for granted.
I got a call from Terry McBride because I had
worked with Sarah McLaughlin in the nineties when she I
think we struggled to put fifty people at Cafe Shane

(20:32):
I think it was called in New York. It was
Marty Diamond. Uh. Terry McBride and I. We're trying to
figure out what is it gonna take to have her
play Radio City Music Hall in a year? How do
we get from fifty to whatever that number is. So
I had a history there. Terry was, um, you know
lives up to the you know, don't ever burn bridges

(20:55):
because my bridge was so solid between network and myself
and we all loved each other so much and then
gone through thick and thin together that he happened to
be friends with the then president of e A. It's
a Vancouver thing and um, Terry called me and said,
you're going to get a call from a guy named
Rusty Roof. I'm like, come on, who makes that name

(21:16):
up as the radio guy? And he goes, yeah, he
actually used to be a radio guy. Um, but he's
the head of hr at e A. Uh. And I
was telling them that they should start a music department
like a film studio. I was so in love with
music supervision, especially for Fordace Film which was Forda Films,
which was Sandy Bullock's company, that my dreams had changed.

(21:37):
I wanted to be the head of a studio, paramount universal,
head of music in a studio. Um, so my initial
commented Terry was games. Anybody your mind? Like I pretended
to play a few of those. You know when I
was trying to sign a band back in the nineties,
What do I, he said, take the meeting. I don't
even think twice. Just take the meeting. So I flew

(21:58):
up to Vancouver and um met with Don and Rusty
roof Um, who were spectacular guys. But here was the difference.
And I think I told you the story years ago.
I was working in the record business in two thousand
and one. Napster was right there. It was in the headlight,
and it felt you felt fear and of the unknown

(22:21):
in the record business, even though people stay oh and
sync it was selling Millie who cares? We saw fear
right there in front of us. UM and I walked
into those buildings A d A and it was like
I was back in MTV in the eighties. There were
kids everywhere. It was loud, people were playing games, there
was creativity. And I remember calling my now ex wife

(22:43):
at the time and saying, if they offered me this job,
I'm taking it. And she said, whoa wa wa, wait
a send, what are you talking about? I said, I
haven't felt this energy in so many years. Okay, the
record business had it for a moment, but it's not
there right now. And she said, are you gonna take
a job based on energy and a building? And I said,
actually think so. Something's going on here. So I met

(23:04):
with Don President and he said what I said to him?
What's your vision? And he said, the greatest thing you
could ever hear to an entrepreneurial guy like myself. He says,
I don't know. He said, we toyed with Robbie Williams
in a FIFA game, we toyed with bar naked ladies
in an NHL game. We got some press. We think

(23:24):
there's something there. What do you think? And I said, well,
I think you guys are spending too much time trying
to sound like sports, and I think eventually sports need
to start sounding like us. I think we need to
be what I'll call the new MTV. At the time,
people labels are spending millions upon gazillions to to pay

(23:45):
for promotion, to get to to get records on the radio.
Remember this is before Spotify, before this UM. But the
audience is gaming. People that are twelve and seven and
in seventeen, they're in games. We have the real estate,
so let's bring music to where they are. Let's change
the sound of sports. Let's change the sound of games.
So if we have a game called Madden two thousand

(24:06):
and four, let's make it sound like two thousand and five.
Why are we still playing a C D C and Queen?
Where are the champions? And why God's name would you
ever license Gary Glitter? Haven't you've heard that story yet?
So they so they said okay, And um, I said, also,
you still send sound like the toy business. So I'd

(24:27):
like to go out there and hire. At the time,
the first guy hired was a guy named Michael Jaquino. Um,
this is pre Pixar, pre Lost on ABC. Let's hire
some of the next greatest generation of composers because we
have such an advantage in this medium we have. If
you if you're if you're writing a score to a film,
you know there's Tom Cruise and oh yeah, he's doing that,

(24:49):
and he's running and he's doing Okay, let's find the
emotion and present what Tom is feeling. But in a game,
you've got millions of people on their couches and you
need to create the emotion that each and every one
of them is feeling. And I bet you once I
present that to the next great generation of composers, when

(25:10):
I untether them to picture, when they become a part
of the story itself, they're going to freak out. And UM.
So that's how it started. So it was really an
entrepreneurial beginning because I started just me and UH. Within
a year, I had two people working for me. UM.
I believe we're still all together, by the way, even

(25:31):
though we're many more people now. UM, and I'm I'm humble,
but I'm also smart enough to know that if you
surround yourself with people that are better than you and
have impeccable taste in music and wonderful ideas, that you know,
the tide rises all boats. As the cliche you know says,
So UM, we just started instead of putting a C.

(25:54):
D C and queen into football games and soccer games.
You know, I went all around the world for my
first year, and I went to every I went top down,
every CEO, every president of every label, and every publishing company,
every artist I can get in a room with. UM.
I met with Steve Berman and Jimmy back then. They

(26:15):
got it from the first second I presented it to them.
Jason Flam got it from the first second I presented
it to them. Craig Calman got it from the first second. Julie,
you know then at def Jam got it from the
first second. A few didn't. Um and we started putting
bands in these games, and next thing, you know, bands
like a Sabian and Kings a Leon. None of these

(26:35):
bands had sinks, nobody knew who they were, and all
of a sudden they started kind of gaining attention. To listen.
Fast forward even ten years whatever the number is. Later,
um uh thirty seconds to Mars. I I put Jared
Leto's band in UM Madden I think it was at
the time, and um Kevin Weatherly called me and he said,

(26:57):
did you guys put a band called thirty seconds to
ours in UM Madden or something? And I said we did.
I said why? He said, because it's testing like familiar
and we haven't played it yet. So I knew we
were on to something and I wasn't looking to be
the hero I wanted. I knew that we could be
ground zero to launch bands, that that's very MTV esque.

(27:21):
We could be ground zero and we could affect. But
I knew. The winning point of doing all of that
was when somebody here's a band. Now, when people here
Kasabian or they hear whatever the list is. We can
go through hundreds of bands. They remember FIFA nostalgically from
two thousand seven or two thousand three. That's where the winning,
That's where the win was. You know, to be forever

(27:42):
associated with that moment. You and I have those moments
when it comes to MTV. You know, you think of
a cure, you think a flock of seagulls. Oh, those
are MTV moments. I thought we could, we could create
FIFA moments or maddened moments, and that has proven to
be true. So um, the people that got it a
hundred percent were the artists. Every artist from day one.

(28:04):
I remember sitting going, remember this is two thousand and two,
Snoop Bust, Jermaine Duprie, all these people that you think
about what it was twenty years ago. We gotta get in.
What do we need to do to get in? Madden?
You know, they had a front row seat to their
fans every night. They knew that their fans played games.

(28:25):
They knew that they and their bands played games. So
that was very important real estate to all artists back
then still is by the way, So that's kind of
where it all started. It was an idea, it was
an entrepreneurial idea, it was a vision. Um and um.
You know, I don't believe in repeating. I'm I'm absolutely

(28:49):
against anything that's cut and pace who Every year we
just have to rip it up and reinvent, do better,
do bigger, do more, um and UM. I think now
I look, you know, in the last year, and I'm
very proud when I see Travis Scott doing a show
in Fortnite, you know, pre the Houston thing. But you know,
I'm very proud of when I see these huge moments,

(29:10):
you know, or Spotify having Spotify Island on the roadblocks.
These are all amazing things. Um. But it's all because
of the years, you know, uh, the evolution of it all,
you know, having Kings of Leon and started Madden too,
sorry FIFA two thousand and two or three, whatever the

(29:31):
year was. Um. Then came guitar hero, then came rock
band and if you look at it that way, you
can see where how the evolution you know, occurred of
it all. And now everybody's paying attention. But we kind
of knew it all along. Okay, you say you were
going to Vancouver. I think, uh, Electronic Guards started in

(29:51):
northern California. Where is the company now? Yeah, well it's
a good story. Um. So they had the president of Studios,
Don Mattrick, who I mentioned before, lived and was based
out of Vancouver because the e A had bought his company.
I think it was called Dynamic Software something like five
or ten years before I met him. So the head

(30:13):
of studios was based at A Vancouver, but e A
has always been based in northern California. So I I
sold my house in l A, moved to Vancouver, moved
in December. I do not recommend moving to Vancouver in
December because for three or four months, uh, you don't
see the sun. It's freezing. And don't get me wrong,

(30:35):
I love Vancouver and I'm friends with lots of people
that live there, but they all say, oh, but you
should see this place in July. I don't want to
be in a place eleven months a year for one
month's sick. Um. But um, you know it was Larry
Probes who was the CEO of e A then who
um he was my Grammy date that year in two
thousand and two. Uh, And he said, who the hell

(30:58):
hired our head of music? It can put them in Vancouver.
And I didn't want to throw our then president under
the bus, so I started a him and haunt. He said,
I get it, I get it done. Hired you Uh uh,
We're in northern Cali. You should where should you be based?
And I had that one moment where I could have
said anywhere by the way, I could have said Aspen.
I know that would have made you happy. Um. And

(31:18):
I said, I don't know whether I want to say
this out loud, but you probably should have never moved
me out of l A. You know. So he says,
moved back to l A. And I said, oh, I
wish you would have told me that before I sold
my house. You know, I'm all in um. Anyway, that
was a crazy year, but I ended up spending only
three four months in Vancouver and then moving to l
A until I moved here to Nashville. And I still

(31:40):
somewhat commute. Up until the pandemic, I was doing every
single week back and forth Nashville l A UM and
the pandemic gave me the opportunity to slow that down
a little. Bit, but uh so we still have massive studios,
really beautiful, impressive studios in Vancouver, where UFC has created,
where FIFA is created. I mean, it's it's unbelievable, but

(32:01):
we are in northern California based company. Well, it used
to be the only direct flight from Nashville was an
American and then Southwest went in. So which one do
you fly? Well? I fly Southwest because they have the nonstops.
American only has one poorly timed NonStop unless you want
to go on a red eye, which I do not.

(32:23):
So um. I literally just got off the Southwest flight
from l a X this morning seven am. Um, so
I do that. And uh. Up until the pandemic, the
advantage of flying Southwest was that a list companion pass,
which was brilliant. But the pandemic obviously none of us
traveled so much. So that's gone now. So ironically that

(32:45):
you it's ironic. You asked me that because as we
flew in today and I was squished, you know, like
a like a you know, like a sandwich, like a
Deli sandwich in between people on Southwest. I said, you
know what, once I don't get my status again at
the end of this year, even if I have to
change planes in Dallas, I'm going on American from now.

(33:08):
It was really good for a while. I don't know
why you think everybody would have multiple flights here nonstops
all day long, because I don't know the last time
you were in Nashville. But this is Las Vegas, for
God's sake. It's out of control, you know, even though
most of us that live here don't ever go down there.
But why wouldn't you have five nonstops today? I don't
get it. Okay, So what was the status of the

(33:35):
gaming business then when you took the gig in twenty
two two? Has opposed it today? And where does e
A fit in the hierarchy of gaming companies? Yeah, that's
a great question. I think back in two thousand and two,
gaming was massive, but gaming was thought of pretty much

(33:59):
as a chldren's activity by those of us in mainstream media.
I don't think we knew then the impact that gaming
had or could have, or would have had or has had.
I think we were making great games, sticky games. There
were people that were obsessed with it, but they looked

(34:22):
particularly comparative to what you see now. They looked like
you know animated, they weren't as real life as they
are now. They were limited in what they could contain.
It was a single player world, not a multiplayer world.
That's a key difference what I just said. You went
to the store, you bought a disk, you stuck it

(34:42):
in your Xbox or your PlayStation two or whatever it
was at the time, and you had a single a
single player experience, and the and the community of that
experience was when you had your buddies come over and
sit next to you on the couch and you had
two controllers that looks like a teen fifty. Now now

(35:03):
you have a multiplayer environment completely online. You're playing with
people all over the world you'll never physically meet. Um.
Everything about it, from from the cloud to the technological
advances is completely on fire. You're living in what you

(35:24):
think is a real world. Everything looks if you play
FIFA Madness. It's really close. People actually getting mixed up
now between what's real and what's not real. Um, And
I think the difference not that you ask me this,
but I'm going to volunteer without you asking me this.
Having come from the record business to the game business.

(35:46):
Although as I like to say it, took me in
two thousand and two, leaving the record business to finally
get into the music business. I know you'd like that,
but it's it's true, um is that the game business
I noticed, because I was on both sides, did not
try to hang on to the past. They did not

(36:08):
try to keep brick and mortar retail in business. They
didn't go out of their way to keep the shiny
disk boxed in a nice little jewel case and that's
the way to sell it. There was no attachment. Actually,
I was in many rooms where they would say, how
do we put this this stuff out of business? How

(36:28):
do we go direct? How do we create a one
on one to our players? Why is there a middleman?
Why are we sacrificing the dollars we're paying to the middleman.
So that's the financial point of view, but as importantly,
how to create a one on one relationship? I don't
recall up until two thousand and one, two thousand to
ever a record company where they said, how do we

(36:49):
create a one on one relationship with our music fans.
It was astonishing to me to hear the difference technology.
They weren't waiting for it, they were creating it. The
expectation of the player, but also the expectation of the corporation.
We're in the technology business. We can't look the same

(37:09):
in two thousand three like we do in two thousand two.
We need to evolve every year or else they're gonna
players are gonna hate us. We can't keep putting out
the same features and expect them to show up every year.
So look at look at how it looks in two
thousand and three. You see an animated, interactive fun game

(37:34):
on a on a limited platform, and now you're playing Fortnite.
By the way, the model changed to free to play.
Now you're going to place like Fortnite, free to enter.
The micro transaction replaced all that. Or if you're playing
Call of Duty, or in the case of e A
FIFA or Battlefield, you're downloading directly from the cloud and

(38:00):
gone of the days when you have to wait six
hours for it to show up. Shows up in six minutes,
sometimes one minute, and as it's downloading, you're already playing.
By the way, you're already in with thirty people from
all over the world. So imagine if you not just
if you not just create technology, you don't have to

(38:22):
fight technology. If you're a part of the evolution in
the creation of technology, and that's the thinking. Imagine what
the game business is gonna look like in five years
or ten years. Think about everything that's evolved now. I
know you're I've read lots of things you've done between
VR and a R and AI and on and on
and on. But I think you know, I've been watching

(38:45):
the difference now for twenty years between the two businesses
now the music business now meaning the label business and
and the publishing business. I think that they've realized that
technology is a great thing. Um my question my challenges
are they meaning my and your friends at labels, the

(39:07):
guys that and the women that run labels. Are they
becoming too complacent right now on the Spotify Apple model,
because at some point that has to end. You're going
to have to evolve to the next level. Are you
a part of building that. I think there are labels
like Warners and Juana, who's the head of digital there.
I think they invest properly. I think they're attaching themselves

(39:29):
and growing forward with new technologies. But but the point
is complacency is very, very dangerous, as we saw in
the record business, and as i've learned in the game business.
We cannot be where we are today in six months,
so twenty years. To answer your question, it's a whole

(39:50):
different medium now. And I don't just believe it. I
know it. The facts are out there. It is the
most important medium for anybody under the age of X.
And you can fill an X by the way. X
could mean twenty, it could be forty, depends who you ask.
Is interactive media? Is interactive entertainment? I think so apart

(40:14):
of the next generations thinking that they expect it in
all media. Are people who are five and ten in
fifteen and twenty now, really in twenty years going to
go on to go to a movie theater where they
see a film with a beginning, a middle, and an
end when all they've known their whole life is choice,
going left, going right, having an impact on the story.

(40:38):
You know, it's something we need to really think about.
And again I'm volunteering this. You didn't ask me, but
I've had many, many conversations with the CEOs of many
labels I where they really start needing to pay attention
to you GC user generated content. I get it. There's
clearly problems and you know, Lucy and others. You know,

(41:01):
they should fight, you know, formats like TikTok because they
need to be compensated fairly. But the one thing they
do need to understand, and it's proven music fans want
to get their hands on the music they want to create.
I think that really comes from gaming. They want to create.
So how do we untether music in the future and

(41:23):
become fairly and fairly compensated, not do what we did
before twenty years ago with Napster where we held tight.
We're gonna show them we're not going to let that
new technology disturb our model. How do we acknowledge that
you g c is what is expected? You know, I
was shocked at first, frankly because I came from the

(41:45):
record business. When all of a sudden, I saw so
many players creating their own FIFA moments or their battlefield
moments and attaching our music to it and uploading it
to YouTube at the time, and I used to think,
where's the takedowns they're stealing? And I was told by
our lawyers, no, actually, we actually want you want don't

(42:07):
you put all of our music up online? Why don't
you put all of our music on TikTok? We want
our players to create. That's what keeps them engaged. And
my shift in my thinking was immediate. I oh my god,
I've been trained in another business where I thought it
was theft. It's actually engagement. So how do we monetize it?

(42:28):
How do we make it fair? Is Spotify I can
to continue to have walls continuously for the future, or
is there another model? I mean, I don't know where
we gonna charge. If you charge me twelve bucks a
month for one service, but you know fifteen to untether
x amount of songs that I can go create, And
there was some model. I'm making that up. I'm going
to spend that money, particularly if I'm fifteen or eighteen.
I want to create with this music. So these are

(42:50):
things you know that I'm challenging people, not for the
sake of what I do. I created a catalog of
thousands and thousands, thousands of cues. When I got there.
We didn't even own some of the music when I
walked in there. From all the years, now we own
some of the greatest, most well known themes period. There's
not a kid you're ever gonna find me that doesn't
know the theme to the sims or the theme to

(43:12):
Battlefield seven notes? You know, to me, I grew up
with those seven notes of Star Wars, don't dunt unt huh?
That was everything to me as a kid. But to
another kid who's fifteen or twenty now they listen to
do dundunt dun't don't, which is the theme to Battlefield,
and they go, holy, that's a holy ship moment. So

(43:33):
how do we monetize that but untether it? How do
we let kids get their hands on it and go
create with it? And I think this is the greatest
opportunity moment we have in twenty years, the untethering of music.
We can't repeat history. We can't do it. We can't
hold off when the art, particularly now that we if

(43:56):
we and we do have one on one relationship with
the music play the music consumer or the player gamer,
then we need to listen to them. And it's clear
people want to create, So why are we limiting them?
So I applaud Universal by the way for taking it on,
but we need to come up with a solution. And

(44:18):
I know them very well. I know that's the way
they think as well. But we need to get there
as a community um in music and gaming. Hope that
makes sense. Let's just go sideways for a second. What
is the future for Microsoft and Sony. They have certain
game franchises, but they historically have had the consoles. Is

(44:39):
it really ultimately just to own the games? What's going
to happen there? I listen, I believe that. You remember
when um Bill Gates years ago said the Xbox is
going to be the center of your living room. Um,
that kind of is true now, I mean gaming. You
can get Netflix, you know it's the center. Um, they're

(44:59):
gonna be um cloud based boxes, right, I mean, uh,
there's no more disk than needs to be put into it.
You're gonna be able to download, You're gonna be able
to what I hope to see. I hope this comes true.
I think they're all working on it is. Imagine a
world a community. Let's use sports as an example. Or
on your PlayStation or your Xbox, you can find your

(45:22):
other Titans fans. I'm in Nashville. I can play, you know,
a game of Madden with them an hour before the
Titans are playing you know, the Broncos. And then without
even touching it, my whole community of thirty people that
I just played with sits there without even blinking an eye,
and we watched the game. We watched the actual game together,

(45:44):
and then we can tell we can go over here
to our music section and we can talk about the music. Well.
In other words, it's our virtual community. It is the
center of my living room. It is the center of
my community. People find each other with commonalities, and that
is where they find each other. Um, I do believe
that that's where it's going to. Well, it's already going there.

(46:04):
You know. Look at the fanaticism rightly so of a Fortnight.
That's a community. Look at the fanaticism of Call of Duty.
That's a community. Look at the fanaticism of FIFA, that's
a community. So those communities have other interest maybe they're
associated with or aligned with gaming music one of them.
But as if you hear a new artist for the

(46:26):
first time, you know, in FIFA and you're in your
FIFA community, Hey, let's all meet tonight at o'clock on
Xbox and we're gonna do a one on one with
that artist. Let's all get some virtual merch together so
we can play in our Billie Eilish jerseys tonight versus
our Titans jerseys. Whatever. The point is that that is
where the community begins and ends. It's what you and

(46:49):
I used to do when we were kids, but we
had to go down the block and hope some other
kids showed up. But now you can do it, you know,
right from where you are. So I believe there's a
huge future in in in these boxes. Uh, in your
living room. Uh. They were very limited before. UM. I
think now listen, the question you didn't ask, but I

(47:10):
assume you were thinking was what happens when Microsoft acquires
Activision eventually? But since you jump, let's go, do we
does that limit them? Are they still going to Is
Activision now Call of Duty going to only be available
on Microsoft and not Sony anymore? Tbd? They say that's

(47:32):
not the way they're thinking. I hope that's true. I
think it'd be foolish personally. But Halo did quite well
on Xbox only. UM, so let's see what happens there. UM.
But I think it really is about community. It's about interactivity.
It's about interactive entertainment. Interactive just doesn't mean a button

(47:55):
on your controller. Interactive means our community is try link together,
looking watching sports together, listening to music together, talking about
music together, playing games together. I think it's a really
exciting future. So let's go back to the players in
the field and market share, etcetera. Who are the big

(48:16):
players here? The big players are Activision e A, UM,
you know, take two. I used to work for straus
Zelnick at BMG and now you know he's across the hall,
so to speak. UM, certainly Epic, you know, UM and others.
I think the addition to your question is who are

(48:36):
the big players? But what what are their franchises? Are
they relying on one or two games or do do
they have a very well spread out portfolio? I think
that's where you know, one of the many reasons why
I've been any A for twenty years is that we're
not reliant on one franchise for every battlefield. We have

(48:57):
FIFA for every Madden, we have SIMS for every UFC.
We have f one now we just did it. We
have Star Wars, we have Marvel. I mean, it's it's
a lot of tent pulse, so to speak, as opposed
to certain companies which are massive, but they rely on
one or two franchises. UM. So those are the players.

(49:20):
Of course, ten Cent you know, as a player, they
own a piece of everything. UM and Uh. I have
friends that have left e A to go work for them. Um.
I don't know how happy they are though that they've left.
I think once you leave, you I know there's a
lot of they call them the boomerangs. There's people at

(49:41):
the A that have left and come back three or
four times. So it must it must be a good
place to work. I haven't left, but you know people
keep coming back and saying thank God? Okay? Is it
analogous to the movie business, which is at this point
almost solely franchise in terms of dollars? What war? Can

(50:01):
you get a new game started? In a new game?
Does it have to be aligned with F one or something?
Can you start from the ground up? Yeah, it's a
great question, and it has changed dramatically. Long cone of
the day when you could put a bunch out and
see what sticks. Um. It takes years to develop original
I P. We do it, UM. I would say once

(50:28):
every year or two we take a bold step and
go for it, but there's years behind it. Sometimes we
bring back our old original I P and reinvent it.
Dead Space is a good example. It was a huge
hit in the late in the in the two thou
two nine Uh, and we're putting it back out this year.

(50:48):
We do enough research to know there's significant demand for it.
The same thing with Skate. Skate was original I p
UM back in the early two usins. However, we're changing
the model. It will be a free to play model.
It's in beta now with five hundred or a thousand people.
In two years it will be up to ten million,

(51:10):
fifteen million people. UM. But there's a lot of testing.
There's a lot of UM player feedback. UH. We listened
heavily to every player that comes into early beta's. UM.
But to answer your question, UM, putting out new I
p is significantly risky. UM. It's always preferred, you know,

(51:33):
to have your own original I p UM. But long
gone of the days when I first started, I remember
sitting with many executive producers talking about ideas for games,
and we go for it. UM happens a little more
and often now. UM. Also, the release schedule has thinned
out over the last five to ten years. There used

(51:56):
to be you know, Lord knows dozens and dozens of releases.
Now there's fifteen. UM. So you have to be very
confident in what you're putting out. UM. If you if
you put something out that you are either unsure about
or that is testing terribly um or testing poorly. I

(52:17):
should say, UM, then you better be prepared to engage
players after it comes out and continually give them content
to re engage them. You you don't run, you don't
kill things so quickly. Even if you have a poor
first showing, you double down and you engage them. The
investment is significant. UM. The reason why, in the case

(52:41):
of F one, we did an acquisition. We acquired a
company and the UK called code Masters that makes some
of the greatest racing games on the planet. UM. So yeah,
in there there's a high level of confident. They had
a hugely successful F one game. UM. And last year
our first one to put out under e A Sports,
with all the talent, by the way that was associated

(53:02):
with building in that game still intact. We didn't suddenly
buy the franchise and replace Um. We had a hugely
successful showing. So there needs to be a high level
of confidence going in. That doesn't mean there isn't room
for original thinking. UM. But it takes years. I mean
I'm working on games right now that won't come out

(53:23):
until we're that far ahead. Okay, when do you get
involved in a project. Yeah, no, that's a great question. Um.
The second something is green light. I get involved because, um,
I don't live in a post world and I don't

(53:43):
live in a quote unquote in production world. Once something
begins to be thought out, it is green light for
the first step. And we're building towards what we call
a vertical slice, and that means we're building one level
out just to present internally, to make sure that every
feels everybody feels confident about going the next step. I'm

(54:04):
heavily involved in building that vertical slice. I'm doing it
right now, hiring a composer or thinking about the tone
of the game and if it if it involves licensed music, um,
and and that that by thinking those things out early
enough that actually helps to evolve the characters. You know.
I have a thing that I do when it's a

(54:25):
more filmic based game, and I've done this in films
as well, even though we might we may never have
licensed music in the game and it's completely filmic. And
I'm hiring Lauren Ball for Hans Emmer to do the score. Hypothetically,
I look at the characters and I like to build
playlists if they were real What would they be listening to?
Who are they? Are they into new music or the

(54:47):
into classic music or the anto you know which genre
of music? What would their patterns of listening be. Because
by associating music to them, each individual helps grow the personality.
And actually by building those playlists, that helps the writers
also begin to go I never thought about it that
character would do this, that characters like this, that character

(55:07):
has the possible ability to do this. So music helps
us define who those characters are. Um, I've sat there
with major composers for two years coming up with tones
and ideas and themes. Some themes never make it to
the final product, but what they do is they'd help
develop the story. So the answer to your question is
very very very early, you know, um, long one in

(55:32):
the days, you know even by the way, to further
answer your question, FIFA twenty three launches, you know, one day,
and I'm working on a FIFA the next day, so
there's never a pause. Those are annual products, so you
only have a year to figure it out. But the

(55:53):
more filming, you know, filming games like Battlefield or Mass
Effect or Dragon Age years three years, sometimes four, Okay,
so you're in there you're making playlists, etcetera. When do

(56:13):
you establish a budget and when do you spend dollar one? Yeah, um,
usually when we get past the with the exception of
hiring a composer early, where I'm exposed to an initial
payment to that composer. UM. I usually don't start spending
money until our vertical slices passed the the internal test

(56:36):
and we're on our way. We're on a production schedule.
At that point, I develop a budget. I take a
look at what we need, possibly what we don't need.
I take a look at the what the score might
sound like, so I can begin to project, um ahead,
what the costs of recording that orchestra will be. UM,
what level of composer, unless I've hired that composer already,

(56:58):
a level that composer I'm going to be able to
afford to bring on. UM. So I would say, the
day we get the vertical slice pass full thumbs up, greenlit,
move forward, I'm in. So I'm managing that budget usually
for about two years. Our next Star Wars project, which
comes out in March, I've been working on for well.

(57:20):
I measure it now by the pandemic, through the entire
pandemic so what was that one? Um, sorry, it's almost
three years. So that's the length because I remember starting
it there. Um, so I built that budget out three
years ago. UM, and uh, we're just finishing it now.

(57:40):
We have one more thing to complete and then we're done.
So that's a full full three years of writing, recording,
managing a budget, um, and delivering against what the expectations are. Now,
of course there's the issue of whether you're going to
have a score, whether you're gonna have licensed music, whether
you can combine those. How do you come up with

(58:01):
the raw number for a budget? Does it depend on
the overall budget of the game, or do they say,
we trust you, Steve, just tell us what it should cost.
How do you come up with a number? I think
it's a combination of the two. I mean, certainly on
a smaller mobile game comparatively to hypothetically Star Wars, you imagine,
the budgets are quite different and so the expectations are

(58:22):
much different as well. By the way, so, um, I'm
able to suggest uh and usually get signed off on
a budget big enough to be able to deliver on
a title like that. Um. But there is Yes, I've
been there twenty years So I think I am confidently

(58:42):
um and humbly at the place where you know, I'll
present a budget and people trust me. Um. I'm not
stupid uh, and I'm certainly um trustworthy enough internally to
where I'm not going to spend million dollars on something
where the expectations should be fifty grand. Um. So I

(59:05):
think I'm to the point now or after all these years,
where I can suggest a budget to the ep UH
and have finance sign off on it uh quickly because
they understand what I'm delivering will deliver. So to speak, Um,
that takes time. It takes um delivering winning scores, It

(59:25):
takes years of seeing audience player feedback. You know, nobody
blinks an I fortunately with me right now, you know
when I put in a budget for FIFA, because everybody
sees the cultural impact and the and the return on
investment of that license music budget. Um. But I'm also
not stupid to where I'm gonna go and say I
want to triple my budget. I pretty much delivered on

(59:47):
the same numbers every year, you know, and if something changes, um,
then I adjust, okay, Uh, just because I remember the
question I was going to ask in terms of mobile games.
How big a part of that is e A. And
of course, if you're on the iPhone platform, apples taking

(01:00:09):
you have the Google Play. What's going on in that
world is opposed to the stuff that's downloaded for play
on the Internet or whatever. I mean mobile games. We've
invested heavily in mobile games. I mean we acquired Glue, um,
which remember the days when this little help was I'm
anticipating a question in this conversation about Kanye So remember

(01:00:30):
when his ex wife had her big uh mobile game.
Glue did that. And Glue also did the Taylor Swift
game that I don't know if that ever came to life,
but and so there they were a massive mobile platform
and we acquired those guys. In the last two years. Um,
we're finally pouring out all of our franchises like FIFA

(01:00:55):
and others onto mobile platforms. So we're investing heavily in mobile. Uh.
The economics, like you said, you know, think about it.
You're wherever you're buying those is a piece being taken out.
Of course, you know you're gonna buy a mobile game
on Apple, you know the economics of it, um, But
you know console games are where the significant expenses in

(01:01:18):
creating and developing significant. Okay, So if you have one
of your big games, whether it be uh end well
or every three or four years, if it's solely score,
or if it's solely licensed music, what's the number for
the budget ballpark? UM? I can tell you this. I

(01:01:43):
can tell you what I can and cannot answer, but
UM it is to answer an earlier questionnaires. It is
somewhat like the movie industry in that regard. Somewhere between
one of the overall score UM closer to one usually
is what I can get for a music budget. It's
small comparatively to the overall numbers in developing a game. UM.

(01:02:05):
You know, I. I know you didn't ask me this,
but I'm gonna say it anyway. UM I I believe
that we should always pay, you know, for other people's
IP We pay to license music into FIFA. We pay
the license music in the Madden There have been thoughts
for years about what television used to do. Well, we

(01:02:29):
have a we're a promotional vehicle, so you should give
it to us for free. And I fought that every
single ounce of the way for several reasons. Number one, UM,
the minute we start not paying for music and either
accept payment for the placement or take it for free.
The credibility of our curation goes down the toilet, and

(01:02:51):
that can never happen. We have to make decisions based
on great music that will travel around the world. I
also believe you pay for other people's intellectual property, and
if we're licensing something, we're gonna pay for it. So um,
you know, I manage, you know, to get a hundred
plus songs in FIFA close to that in Madden, and

(01:03:11):
I set a budget incording accordingly where the money goes
the right way, it goes to the people who are
licensing from We make better decisions. Everybody wants to be
in that real estate. But you know we don't make
those We don't make those decisions based on cost or
money spent. We make those decisions based on the best
music possible. And you know, fees and budgets set on that.

(01:03:33):
Everybody has an expectation as to what we're gonna pay.
Let's go to the easier side the score. So you
may hire someone prior to the layer cake being complete,
but you're gonna hire somebody shut either after over the
period of years, which is longer than it takes to
make a movie. How involved is the composer? Tell me

(01:03:56):
the relationship from the moment you hire them to end
of production. Yeah, this is a part of the business
in particular that I genuinely and deeply love. I didn't
know how much I loved it, frankly, Bob, until I
got into it to the point where I have such
a deep connection to the composer community. Um, listen, I

(01:04:18):
allow the composer to be involved, he or she as
deeply as they would like to be. I would prefer
more than less. I would prefer to them to have
input into the story, into the characters. I want that
because I want the music to inextricably tie in with
the characters and the action. Um. So, these are very

(01:04:39):
long periods of time, So I don't have Hans Zimmer
or Hilda or others exclusively for these three years they're
doing they're doing movies, they're doing television shows. But when
we get closer to release, after years of building these
tones and ideas, then they come in the time exclusively

(01:05:01):
and they helped me finish out the project. That's kind
of where it's just that's more like a movie. Um, Frankly,
I've never seen a composer now that I think about
it to this day that hasn't just dove in the
deep end. They want all in the biggest composers in
the world. I watched, you know, shows on Netflix and

(01:05:21):
HBO and others, and I'm blown away by some of
the music that's happening in television right now, which is
one of the most exciting places too for entertainment. My
you know, there's I don't even know if we announced
it yet. We will in a minute, So while say
here here, I'll say it here anyway, pardon me, um.
I was watching the show on Apple called Servant. It
was a Shamalan thing. The music was so damn good.

(01:05:46):
It was horror music, but like I never heard before.
Horror music is supposed to sound like Bernard Herman meets
you know, um, Halloween, but this was psychological. The music sick.
It's scared the b Jesus out of me, the music
in that. And so for Dead Space, which comes out

(01:06:07):
next year early next year, I wanted this guy, Trevor Grecus,
didn't meet him, never knew, blew my mind. So this
relationship now is two years old. He has contributed so
much in challenging us. What does horror feel like? What

(01:06:29):
does fear feel like? How could you psychologically get into
the head of somebody on a couch who you'll never meet,
to where they are emotionally messed up from what's happening
on screen musically speaking. So I think you want somebody
like that who has huge ideas, who's the next generation thinker,

(01:06:50):
who understands the medium. Because Trevor is a game fanatic.
He understood massive fact he he played the old Dead Spaces,
he knew it. I don't need composers because they're gamers,
because they understand the technology. But I want composers who
understand the opportunities that come with the medium, and that
to me is where it changes the whole game, no

(01:07:13):
pun intended. Lauren Bolf does the same. He does Mission
Impossible and all these great movies that are that are
in the theaters. But when I work with him, he
digs in because it's like it's like a sandbox. Now
I get to explore. Now I get to have fun.
Now I'm not tethered to that thing the director shot

(01:07:35):
that's on screen. Now I can come up with all
these crazy ideas. I can invent instruments. We can play
the instruments in ways they're not even supposed to be played.
We can go and you know, just whatever wacky ideas
that enhanced that emotional participation. And um, I just think

(01:07:57):
it's it's really become. Frankly, one if not my favorite
parts of the gig is digging in with these intensely
creative minds and coming up with ways. Well, I'm gonna
give you another example. Hilder, who won the Oscar for Joker,
who I learned warners wanted to fire her every single day,

(01:08:20):
not Todd Phillips but everybody else because she was doing
something very against the grain. Um. When I first met her,
I was smart enough to go to Berlin. It was
my last trip before the pandemic. Uh. I knew she
was going to win the Oscar, but she hadn't, and
I wanted to hire her to do battlefield the next battlefield.
Battlefield takes place obviously in the future, but the not

(01:08:45):
too distance future. Climate change has completely destroyed the world
as we know it. Sounds like it could be true.
Hurricanes are ten times stronger, snow snowstorms or growing up
in July, nations are underwater, there's two nations left, Russia

(01:09:06):
and the US, and they go to war. They're not
fighting for land, they're fighting for control of climate. So
I sat with Hilder and at first she said, m hm,
war game. I don't know how I feel about that.
Remember I knew her for an hour, and I said,

(01:09:27):
you know, the difference between call of duty and battlefield
is battlefield isn't about war. Let's see how many people
we can shoot. Choo choo, choo shoot. It actually makes
you think as to why we're in war. It actually
is a war game with a conscious And imagine if
we could write a score we didn't know there was
a pandemic that was about to happen. Imagine if we

(01:09:49):
could write a score that was indistinguishable between the music
and the sound design, to where the bullets sounded like percussion. Sorry,
the helicopter sounded like cushion, the bullets coming out of helicopters,
and the string sounded like the wind. But to the
point where the fear of the inevitable, unless we get

(01:10:10):
a grasp as to what the hell is going on
with climate change in this world, it makes you shake
in your shoes, shake in your chair. Can we write
a score where you can listen to it on Spotify,
and I really recommend it from the beginning to the end.
Get some wine, smoke a joint, I don't care, Get
into a place, lean back in a chair. Can it

(01:10:33):
live in its own? Can it be a warning? Can
it let us know? Can it let us feel what
we're doing to this planet, the inevitable where we're headed?
And her eyes lit up. I said, so, think about
it as a piece of music that works in the game,
but think of it also as a piece of art,
a piece of music that can live in its own

(01:10:56):
and shake our souls to what we've done to this
planet and what's an inevitably going to happen unless we
get on the right track. Can we do that? And
within an hour here's a woman that just won the
Golden Globe, was about to win an oscar, and she
was signing on to do music for a game she
never played, a game she never wrote for a game.

(01:11:18):
We decided not to record any live instruments. We decided
to invent instruments. We decided to go to a shipyard
in France and record the scraping of the hull against
the metal and the cement. We wanted it to not
necessarily be musical. We wanted it to be emotional. So

(01:11:39):
I've sat in the studio at my house many times
and listen to the score album. It is not like
listening to you know, Fiddler on the Roof or or
anything like that. It makes you go. It's if there's
a little nine inch nails in there in the sense
of electronic what the f is this? There's a lot

(01:12:01):
of pulsation in there that makes your heart go to
a place you can't imagine. And there's a hell of
a lot. At the end of forty something minutes, you're
sitting there in your chair saying, what the funk was that?
And hopefully, and now I believe she's about to be
hopefully nominated for two Oscars I hear this year. But

(01:12:24):
I've seen it performed eleven minute piece at Disney Hall,
and I just saw another maybe fifteen minute piece of
the score performed at the Opera House in Sweden. And
it lives on its own. It can sit on its
own and be a masterpiece and art piece because art
is supposed to and I think you'll agree shake you

(01:12:45):
to your core. If you see something or feel something,
it's supposed to shake you. It's supposed to make you think,
wake up, even if you don't like it, even if
you disagree with it, even if you hate it. I
don't need war in this case. Every time you in
a battle for it to be Timpani who said war
has to a victory has to sound like fog horn

(01:13:05):
d I mean if I ever was in a war
and I just want a battle and I killed people,
I'd throw up. Probably I would not have a victory.
Lap so we wanted today could take a different approach
out of it that hopefully to answer your question, is
the level of high involvement that some of the best

(01:13:27):
composers in the world all get involved with when it
comes to this medium. It's pretty phenomenal to see it
now there are a lot of old rockers involved in composition.
Is that window still open? And what is the barrier

(01:13:50):
to entry for newbies to the sphere. When you say
old rockers want, you mean old rockers wanting to get
their music into you. No, no, no, no, I'm talking
about his composers like Mark Mark m M. Yeah. I
get a lot of calls, Bob from a lot of
guys in bands that I worked with in the old

(01:14:12):
days or bands that I certainly know of in the
old days that they want to be composers. Um. Very
few can make that transition. There are great exceptions. Trevor Rabin,
Mark Mother's Bow, you know, certainly the guys in nine
inch Nails. You know, Trent and Atticus UM, Jeff Russo, UM.

(01:14:37):
Certain guys can do it. Most camp and I've done
it with many, probably a few too many times because
I was a fan and thought, oh, this is just
gonna be awesome. I've always wanted to work with this
guy or this woman. UM. But there's it's it's a
big gap between being a rock star and being a

(01:14:59):
composed The first one is collaboration. If you're making a record,
you're going into studio, you're shutting everybody out. You deliver
the record, maybe to your A and R guy, Maybe
he gives you an hour or three of feedback. Maybe
you adjust, maybe you don't. But it was done in isolation.
Hans Simmer doesn't do anything in isolation. He calls me.

(01:15:19):
He's working with me right now every single day. What
do you think about this? Should I change it? Does
it fit? Yeah? Hans? Why don't we try doing this?
Instead of this, I need to get this emotion out
of it. Okay, I'll be back. It's a collaborative thing.
So sometimes a little ego gets in the way of
the rock star trying to be a composer. Sometimes the

(01:15:42):
idea that they're being given direction doesn't fall so well
on their ears. I was working God, I was so
optimistic about working with this big, high profile hip hop guy, um,
and after a couple weeks, I just we just couldn't
go any further because every time I would give direction,

(01:16:04):
he would come back with a different version of what
he did. And I'm not saying my my word, my
direction is the end and make it like me. That's
not what I'm saying, But like Hans or Hilder, where
we'll sit there and we'll come up with crazy ideas.
What if we could do this? What if they challenge me,
I challenge them. It's a pretty deep relation. Listen, a

(01:16:26):
lot of these composers have become my best friends. I
spend more time with them than anybody you know, to
three years on a project, every day, hours every day,
so that transition is really really tough. Um. Like I said,
there are exceptions, you know, Jeff Russo has become an
incredible composer. Played guitar in a rock band. Who knew

(01:16:49):
he knew probably I worked with him before. Um incredible
collaborative spirit. But then there's the next generation of great
composers who did play in rock bands, Chris Bowers, Hilda
who I just talked about. It's collaboration from the second
you enter the room together. There's no here's my idea,

(01:17:11):
that doesn't exist. It's let's create the vision where when?
And and very humbly speaking, Hans Zimmer, biggest composer in
the world. What do you think? Did I get it wrong?
I might have gotten it wrong? What do you think?
And they want feedback. There isn't an ego asking here,
you know. It's I'm not saying ego doesn't exist, because
that would be naive. But it's a very different thing

(01:17:35):
than making a record. UM. And I really enjoy UM.
You know. I'm heavily involved in the SCL the Society
Composers and Lyricists, and this community of collaborators is quite impressive,
and it's something I was never really exposed to when

(01:17:55):
I was in the record business for so long. You'd
go in there and you'd make a record with the
band end, but you had to make sure you were
good to their ego. You know, that's great. How many
hopefully I wasn't in too many, But you know how
many times did you go in the board room once
a week and they played a record and you thought
the record was average? But everybody's bobbing their head up

(01:18:15):
and down because everybody's looking at each other, and because
the CEO is in the room, Oh my god. But
you're going, oh my god, this thing's gonna stiff the
second and it's radio. You know, everybody's bullshitting each other.
Composers and myself and others. We don't bullshit each other.
We just we understand the end result is the most
important thing. How we get there, it doesn't matter. There's

(01:18:38):
no feelings to be hurt. You know, there's no my
way or the highway, you know. So just going back
to the Hilder thing, you know, it's it's it's going
to disturb you to listen to the score for Battlefield,
and that's the intention. But that wasn't something that she

(01:18:58):
came up with and said, Okay, I got it, I'll
write it, I'll send it to you in three months.
That was Monday through Saturday. She was in Berlin. I
was in Nashville during a pandemic. We had our Swedish
producers every day on the phone hours listening to not
just Q by Q, listening to bar by bar of

(01:19:22):
collaborative effort to create something that all of us. I
remember I handed the first portion to score in and
I had some people go, what is this? This is horrible?
We can't deal with this. Why because it's upsetting us.
Good We're on the right track. Okay, let's flip the
story over. Uh, let's talk about a totally licensed UH score.

(01:19:46):
What I mean is different individual rock, pop, hip hop tracks.
How do you decide to do that? And what are
the steps in that? So? I have some rules I've
had for twenty years with my team, and my team
has been together for that long. Uh. Nobody is allowed
to listen to the radio. Ever. Nobody is allowed to

(01:20:09):
be influenced or looked at charts. Ever. Nobody is allowed
to define success in a one dimensional way. Having a
number one or a top ten record is meaningless because
success in the year two and music can be defined
in many different ways. Is somebody who gets a hundred
million streams on Spotify more important than somebody who has

(01:20:31):
a million streams. They're both successful, depends who they are,
depends what the expectations were. So I believe if we
pay attention to trends, if we understand who's on their
way up, who's potentially not where to certain where are
certain genres going in the World's hip hop? Certainly, you

(01:20:53):
can look at the numbers of hip hop. It's the
most popular genre in music around the world. But where
is it in its life in its lifetime right now?
You know, we were we were we were working with Anita,
you know, years ago, you know, in Latin America because
we believed we saw this trend of the globalization of

(01:21:16):
Latin music. So we were placing Anita in the sims
like before. We were fighting our own folks internally, you know,
um rock, I told Sabelle on my team the second
I started hearing a couple of years ago, rock is dead.
I said, take the NHL franchise and bring rock back.

(01:21:36):
It's gonna come back. There's no way you're gonna convince
me rock is dead forever. Go find the greatest rock
bands on the planet, not the old ones, not the
ones that sound like the old ones. What is rocks?
And what is a kid? Who's a team? Who was
raised on jay Z and Metallica because parents played it?
What is the what is that sound like? What is

(01:21:57):
the next evolution of rock? Sound like? Take the entire
NHL soundtrack and devoted to bringing rock back, pay attention
to the fact that it's not dead forever, and have
confidence that we can be a part of that. So
I my job is to surround myself with people with
impeccable taste. I have an opinion. Um, my opinion is strong,

(01:22:24):
and we all fight and the best Remember those fights
he used to have? I remember them so finally, when
I used to have all my buddies over, usually to
our living room or sometimes in my bedroom, and we'd
all bring records and we'd play it, and we'd play
Talking Heads of the Police, and we'd fight over which
one was best. That track sucks, No, you're wrong, this
track is huge? What's wrong with you? Elvis Costello's I mean,

(01:22:44):
I love those fights because they weren't fights, weren't batting
each other up. We were being passionate. We loved it
so much. I was allowed to love one band more
than you and vice versa. I love those conversations we
have at work. I actually encourage them once a while.
I'll stick my neck out and go, you know, I
like Coldplay, but I don't know if Coldplay is really

(01:23:05):
for him. You know, an eighteen year old play. You
know who's listening, Who's going to see Coldplay right now?
I'm not denying their talent. I'm not denying how huge
they are, you know, but um, maybe there's some other
choices we should make. Maybe we should invest in a
lot of artists that people have yet to hear from.

(01:23:26):
Because if I did a focus group today for FIFA
twenty four, people would tell me to put in the
bands from last year because they love them so much.
But last year they hadn't heard of them yet. So,
as taste makers, and I say that with humility, as

(01:23:47):
people with real estate, where we need to be highly
responsible for what gets into that real estate, musically speaking,
we better be damn good. I don't expect you to
love every one of the hundred songs. That would be impossible.
But if you actually love a couple and they change
your life, and you can look back and say, oh
my god, the first time I heard this was an

(01:24:08):
NHL two thousand and seven to change my life, and
you're talking about that in two that's a huge, huge
positive thing we've we've created. So we spend a year
and we look at every possible angle. Where is music going,
where is it not going? You know, how much do
we invest in this genre? How much do we invest

(01:24:30):
in I can't. I can't. I learned the hard way.
For a couple of years, I would spread the genres
out in Madden Football because I would go to a
Dallas Cowboys game and they would play country. And then
I'd go to a New York Giants game and they
would play hypothetically jay Z. And I'd go to the
NFL and they'd say we are nine and ninety were
everything for everybody. And then I realized it's impossible. If

(01:24:53):
you think you're everything for everybody, then you're nothing to everybody.
You have to make a choice, you have to put
your you know, whats on the line. You have to say,
this is what we're gonna sound like, this is the tone,
these are the limits to where we're gonna go. These
are the artists we're going to invest in in this year,
and hopefully it'll stick. And once you engage the audience

(01:25:14):
year after year, they have higher and higher expectations. So yeah,
I went from Blake Shelton five years ago in Madden
Football to Kendrick lamar Uh to the baby before he
did what he did, and now we're all hip hop
because and not just hip hop. Like, let's take a

(01:25:36):
look at the charts. As I said, who are the
next stars? Who's change? We hired you know, um hit
Boy to do the score. There's a rock star turning
into a composer. He did an incredible job this year.
The players, and I don't mean our players, I mean
the NFL players. They listen to our soundtrack. I don't

(01:25:56):
care about the guys in the Budweiser stand, the people
my age who go in there and they want to
hear more Bong Jovi in a football game. I don't care.
I care about what the players in the field listened to.
In the locker room. At the Titans games we used
to have I've been in a game this year yet,
but we used to have the Madden twenty when everybody

(01:26:18):
was walking into the stadium, not into the suits, but
into the regular seats with their kids. They would play
all the music from Madden that year in the stands
and the NFL did a focus group a test and
they said it tested through the roof, and I said,
that's amazing. Used to tell me that only NFL fans

(01:26:38):
want to hear. All they want to hear is classic rock,
and they said, yeah, those are the people in the sweets.
But we were talking like kids and they were freaking out,
and I said, do you know how easy it is?
Look how easy that is. You're making yourself relevant just
by the association. All those kids play Madden. We can't
deny it. They play Madden. The players obviously play Madden.

(01:27:03):
That's the soundtrack that they hear for months. It's embedded
in their brains. They walk into a football stadium, maybe
it's the first time they've ever gone to see a
live sporting event, and the first thing they hear is
that it's credible. So, um, long winded way, I hope
I answered the question. Maybe I didn't. I apologize, but um,

(01:27:25):
it's from now, um through the fall through January, all
we're doing is talking about how we did, what we did,
what we got right, what we got wrong. What is
the next year to look like? Genre wise? We're gonna
have a lot of conversations about hip hop. Where is
hip hop going? What's the next underground of hip hop?

(01:27:46):
We're gonna talk a lot about Latin music, We're gonna
talk a lot about rock and roll, and we're gonna
make some decisions based on next year. That doesn't mean
Madden's gonna necessarily sound. It's not gonna become I'm not
telling you it's gonna be all rock and roll next year.
But we really have to look at, Okay, fifteen and

(01:28:07):
eighteen year olds, this is what they listened to this year.
We're going to actually hopefully be a part of shaping
their musical taste for the next year. Now, what about
next year's fifteen year old? What does that look like?
In cases like FIFA, what does that look like? In
Italy and the UK and Argentina and the US and Japan.

(01:28:27):
We do not localize the music. We localize games for language,
but we do not localize the music. So when an
artist gets into FIFA, everybody in the world heard, you
know Lewis the child. I just love this because you
know this is years ago, maybe eight years ago, six
years ago. Um, I think I don't quote me on

(01:28:50):
the number, but on Spotify, it was like seven thousand streams,
and then we announced that year the soundtrack list and
Louis the Child's name was on it and went to
a million in twenty four hours just from a list.
Nobody had heard the song yet, So we really need

(01:29:13):
to get it right. And I take that responsibility, and
that responsibility it doesn't always reflect my personal taste, you know,
I just I think I have pretty good taste. But
I need to think about that player, that player around
the world who's going to learn something new musically speaking
for the first time. So we need to be impeccable

(01:29:36):
in our people culturally, clem clairvoyant and understand trends. And
I need to make sure I'm surrounded by people always
that understand that. And that goes back to the beginning
of this. Why I don't let anybody listen to the radio.
I don't want to hear from anybody. It's number one
on Billboard, it's number one, and my book cares anymore.

(01:29:58):
Welcome back to I'm not a nostalgic guy, Bob. I
don't live in the past. I've you know, it's nice,
you know, once a year to listen to a Springsteen record,
and remember high school, but it's pretty meaningless to me
in my life. I really want to I really want
to make sure that you know, I really get excited

(01:30:20):
about what music can do to people going forward, and
I think, um, we have the real estate to help
with that. Okay, So let's just you've gone through the
process with your team of what you want the sound
to sound like. We know there's a very aggressive business.
There are people who are pitching you, etcetera. Once you've

(01:30:44):
locked in what the music should sound like, what are
the steps? Do you go to the usual suspects? Do
you not contact anybody and ultimately is in the most
favored nations? Or do you pay more for one track
as opposed to another. I mean, the people that know
that we're looking at them are obviously the artists and
the labels and the publishers. I get great joy, um,

(01:31:06):
humbly speaking, when uh, we put in a license request
to a label, uh and they're looking it up and
they say, we don't have this song yet in our system.
I love that the band got it to us so
early that they didn't hand it into the label yet.
I get tremendous joy out of that because we're so
freaking early, um, and we all have to be really quiet,

(01:31:28):
and even the artists, nobody's really broken that code of
silence as far as I remember for years. You know,
you'll know in July. If you're going to make it
in a FEEFA that comes out in September, you'll know
in July. And we they're all on board with making
sure that nothing gets said in social media and it
stays quiet because they're a part of our launch. Uh M,

(01:31:50):
A fan is not typical, you know, M fan. There
there's certain licenses that are have valued more than others.
You know, if I'm going to license uh um, a
big artist who has a new material that we think
is going to blow up, and the value of that
is more than an artist that's putting out their first single.
You know, I think everybody pretty much agrees with that.

(01:32:13):
I mean, um, I'm willing to pay if I support
a band this year and it blows up and next
year I want to put their single from their next album,
I'm certainly prepared to pay more for it because they
got bigger. Only once, by the way, in my twenty
years did I get was I told by a person
in a label licensing department on a band that had
yet to put out even a record that I was

(01:32:34):
offering too little because it was going to be a hit.
I said, well, sorry, then I'll pass because I'm not
gonna pay you on futures. Um. But um, but let's
do you watch it? How do you actually find it?
Do you do it yourself? Do you have regular contacts?
Are you inundated with you know, whether it be tracks, text,

(01:32:57):
whatever people want to be in uh, inundated? Yes, Um,
but that sometimes isn't what necessarily works. I think it
is us being proactive, us getting out there. Um. Sabella
my team at the beginning of every year goes to Europe.
She literally goes to everyone in her network, which is

(01:33:19):
pretty massive. What bands are going in the studio? When
can I get in the studio to hear the tracks
they haven't recorded yet? Can I come to the studio
and hear the demos? You know, I think we are
out there. We're out there like crazy. Certainly you know,
the pandemic stop that, let's get out there. It made
it more challenging, so we had to rely on hopefully
security of you know, it being sent to us. Um.

(01:33:41):
But for the most part, we're out there. We don't
wait for it to come to us. If I waited
half the time for it to come to us, it
would be in shrink wrapping and radio on radio stations
desks already. You know. Um, we need to be very proactive.
I'm sure. Um, if we sat down with my team
for the most art for the most part, they could
tell you every artist that's writing and hoping and planning

(01:34:05):
to put a record out in the next year or two.
There are exceptions, of course, I'm not saying we know
of you know, three million, you know, But where the trendsetters?
Who's the next generation of artists that we've been following?
Where they at? That's our responsibilities. I have a lead
music supervisor, Sabel Pettis. She's amazing. She's been with me
for twenty years. She comes from a and R at

(01:34:27):
Warners before that, and her job, her job is a
strictly creative job. Where's every band at? Who do you
believe in? Where are the trends? Where they are they
writing right now? Have you heard it? Have you gotten
on a plane to the studio where they will play
it for her? You know, I have many many, um,
fond memories of bands sitting down with a guitar or

(01:34:48):
something and saying, this is what the song is. We
just wrote this, what do you think. My favorite story,
which dates me for a second, is when the guys
at Green Day were in um Ocean Way in l
A and UH asked us to come out to Ocean
Way and they played us American Idiot and they said,
we're about to go in and record it. Rob Cavallo
was there and UH, this, when do we need to

(01:35:10):
finish it by to get it in Madden, and I went, oh, man,
we have arrived and so um do we miss some things? Yes?
But the beauty of the medium that I work in
is that if something comes, if it's not finished by
the time we lock, I can add it to downloadable content.

(01:35:30):
In a month or two, I can always add it.
I can refresh it. As a matter of fact, we
just did you know the Ultimate FIFA Soundtrack. That's we
had a narrow down to thirty or forty songs of
the best songs to come from FIFA over the last
twenty years. We took a lot, We worked with Spotify,
we looked at playlists, we talked to gamers, and we

(01:35:51):
came up with that playlist. It's just a list of songs,
but the fanaticism of getting in that on that list
was mind blowing to me. But that didn't ship with
the game. That ship this week when we give you
a free downloadable World Cup portion of the game, and
now you get thirty or forty new songs, including Casabian,

(01:36:12):
including Blur song number two, which is now forever tied
to the game of soccer. Um uh, so on and
so on each The list is long, but so we
can always update, We can always take things out if
we don't believe in something, but more importantly, we can
always add, which we do. Okay, this is the music

(01:36:33):
business in general. People are on neither one side or
the other there the business or their creators. You talk
about writing cues, Tell us about that in your own
musical creativity, writing cues um as in scores. Yes, okay, um, Well,

(01:36:53):
you know I when I was I know you didn't
ask me, but I'm gonna answer it this way. When
I was for my mom put a guitar in my
hand because I asked for it. Uh. And when I
was seven, I guess she saw me doing some crazy
things to some crazy songs. I would want to take
the horn parts from Chicago c t A. At the time,

(01:37:17):
as you recall and rewrite them. I thought Terry cath
was the greatest guitar player in her But I wanted
to rewrite Robert Lamb's parts. I wanted to rewrite all
of this stuff. I was seven. Probably sucked what I
was rewriting, but I wanted to do it. So she
used to put me on a bus to Port Authority
at seven, by myself on the bus, sometimes by the way,

(01:37:39):
on a side. And it was Mark Shaman, who was
a couple of years older than me, who inevitably went
on to be becoming a massive composer and Broadway writer.
But we were going, we've we we've since reconnected. And um,
I used to go to Carnegie Hall and study with
this guy who looked ancient to me. He actually was
like and I was seven to me, he could have

(01:38:00):
been three thousand, and he was so old that he
was the composer to the one of the first silent
films with score, called The Nook of the North Okay Classic.
And um, he taught me, at seven, nine, ten years old,
how to rewrite these cues and how to begin to

(01:38:23):
write for picture. What does this scene looks like? The
scene looks like this. The actors are doing this, the
script does this? Where does silence serve? Where does music serve?
Even better? How do you create the emotion and the
person in the chair in the theater? What are your options?
What is the orchestration, the instrumentation. It was unbelievable to

(01:38:47):
me that you could control the emotional experience with one
minute of music. And I also learned when I lied
to my Jewish grandmother at seventeen, and she said, hey,
that's a nice hobby you have, but in our family

(01:39:08):
the choices. You can become a doctor, you can become
a lawyer, or god forbid, a dentist. That was a quote,
and I felt bad because my dad was a dentist. Um.
I lied, and I went to school to study music. Um.
But the one thing I learned was I'm good, but
I'm much better if I hire other people to do it.
I can contribute, but I'm gonna hire Hans Zimmer to

(01:39:30):
write it, but I have enough knowledge to be able
to communicate with him on musicians terms. So to write
a queue, and to write a queue in an interactive format,
you're not talking about what's happening on the screen. You're
talking about all of the possibilities. Are you going left?

(01:39:52):
Are you going right? Are you running and falling under
the log and the bad guy gets you, or you
jumping over the log and you made it or the
other ten thousand or ten million possibilities? How are you
writing that in one minute? What is the objective of
the music? Is the is the objective to sit above

(01:40:13):
and to have a you know, as I mentioned before,
we won the war, so bring on the timpany that
sits above it? Or is to be so subtle that
you don't even know the music is there. It's there,
but it's you're two in the scene. So the but
you're feeling anger or anxiety or fear or joy, and

(01:40:37):
then you probably don't even realize what's doing. That is
not what's happening on the screen. It's when that music
gets in your in your soul. Because I don't believe
that music is meant to be or written to be heard.
I believe music is written and meant to be felt.
So a composer, if guided well and as a collaborative person,

(01:41:00):
can find that emotion and not even rely what's going
on in the screen. What happens if you get up
to go to the bathroom and the screen, but you
hear the music, you're still feeling, oh my god, I
gotta get back, I gotta get back, I gotta get
back to the couch. What's going on the screen is
not what's doing that. What's going on in your ear,

(01:41:21):
to your heart, your soul. So doing that in one
minute or sometimes twenty second moments is incredibly challenging. Now,
the beauty of gaming is that you're not writing one
continuous queue. You're writing pieces that technology can allow it
to go left or right. So if you're running in

(01:41:43):
a horror film running and you trip over the log,
the trigger in the technology is triggering that music to
do one thing. But if you make it over the log,
it knows you did it. So now the music is
doing something else. So it really is interactive with your experience.
It's not tethered to that screen. Um, and it's pretty.
And those are just one example. You know, years ago,

(01:42:08):
fifteen years ago, maybe we did the Lord of the
Rings games and I thought, you know, we were going
to hire a composer and I could use the music
from the films, which uh, we did. Um, but I
had a moment where I wanted to hire Jimmy Page.
I thought, anybody who listens to Zeppelin like me, knows

(01:42:28):
that Lord of the Rings was a part of this mindset. Okay,
I mean it was there. And if you ask any
of guys in Laura in in Zeppelin, they'll tell you
Lord of the Rings right, the books in particular, you know,
because it's previous to the films. And so I reached
out at the time to David Dorne. I know you
probably know, Um, we understand by the way runs maps

(01:42:53):
now for Apples. Yes, he's in Maps. Yeah, I need
to call him and tell him I'm lost. I think
I just need to have that moment with him. Um.
But anyway, I reached out to him, and everybody believed.
Everybody agreed. I said, let me license a bunch of
Zeppelin tunes and have Jimmy right, that's Lord of the Rings.
That's how the next generation should should learn Lord of
the Rings. So of course we went to the lawyers,

(01:43:16):
whoever they may have been, and they said, well, with
the tunes, with the Zeppelin tunes, we didn't even get
to money. But like we realize it has to mix
itself during game play, so we need to hear the possibilities,
like what are the three or four ten mixes that
the engine is going to create? And I said, I

(01:43:37):
can't play you that because it would be millions. I
don't know what the computer you know that, sorry, the
technology might change, you know, the base might go here
and Jimmy Page's guitar Michael here, and Robert Plant's voice
might soar and stay in a note. I don't know.
It depends what the players doing. And at the time
they couldn't. I didn't do the deal. They couldn't wrap

(01:43:58):
their heads around it. I couldn't get approval on every
single mix because the number was infinity. I still think
it's the most badass idea and I wish I could
still do it, you know. Um. So that's to me
about writing a queue. It's um. It's not writing something
to be listened to like a record many times, it's

(01:44:20):
something to be written to be felt. And if you
don't understand that, and I guarantee you knowing you you do.
But if you don't understand that, think about, for instance,
what John Williams Scores and Star Wars did to all
of us back in the seventies. Think about how we felt.

(01:44:42):
Think about when we were soaring into the world of
Star Wars and that very Stravinsky classical type of score,
which was not what we were listening to on w
an E W where I was from, we were listening,
we were listening to rock music. But that score made
me feel a certain way. It made me feel my

(01:45:05):
chest puffed out. I felt bigger than life. I didn't
listen to it like I listened to a pop song
and w ABC in New York that was a different experience.
I listened to it like with confidence. That's what we
have to get. Okay, you depict a very full life.

(01:45:32):
We're talking to you, just one composer every day and
you have multiple games. You're talking about travel. What degree
did this contribute to your divorce? Wow? What an amazing question,
all of it, all of it. Listen, I married the
wrong person, and I want my kids to hear me
say that, because that would hurt them. But that didn't help.

(01:45:53):
But you know, I ended up marrying this job, and
I love this job and I have no regrets about that.
I devoted my life to this job because I believed
in it. I didn't do that when I worked at
Capitol Records. The Andy Slater days of Capitol Records were
not worth marrying, but being in the next being a

(01:46:17):
part of the evolution of entertainment and knowing I could
use that real estate to do what I always like
to do since I was fourteen years old, play really
cool ship for a lot of people and saying, what
do you think I'll never forget playing Houses of the
Holy from a next door neighbor. Holy crap, are you kidding?

(01:46:38):
Playing again? I still do that. My wife, I'm remarried,
always says, my god, you act like a fourteen year old,
and I go, yeah, And I've been able to make
a living out of that. I don't think she means
that when she says that, I think she means it differently,
is my point. But you know it contributed to my divorce.
I'm not going to avoid your question. It contributed to it.
I traveled a lot. I still do um and I

(01:47:00):
missed a lot, and I would try to come home
a lot. I would go to London to work and
then come home in the weekend to see my son's
baseball game, and then go back the next day to London.
But you can't you can't do that forever, so it
didn't contribute to my divorce significantly. Um and um, it's okay,

(01:47:22):
and your present wife accepts that your job is number one. Well,
my present wife. From the first day I met her,
I found out that Zeppelin was her favorite band of
all time, so I was ten steps ahead. UM uh yeah,
of course, you know, of course, and we listen, we're
adults now, I what at tangent I'm about to go on.

(01:47:43):
I don't understand why people get married now that I'm
an adult in their twenties and early thirties. I do
not believe in it. I believe the best time to
get married, if you do get married, is as an adult.
Get married in your forties, when you're grounded, when you
know what your life is, when the expectations of each
other are set. You know. Um, my growth took me

(01:48:06):
one way and my ex wife's growth took her another way.
So I am very fortunate that I found the most
amazing person on earth who loves what I do, appreciates
what I do, by the way, and all my friends
like Hans Zimmer and they love her. I don't hold
her back from that. She's a part of it. She
comes to the studio all the time, pops in. My God,

(01:48:28):
I can't get her away from half the composer she loved.
Her dad was a musician. He was a recording artist
for him c a way back in the day. You know. Um,
So she understands. She comes from the world of music
her parents. Um. And I think she sees the excitement
that I have when I'm working on a score. She

(01:48:48):
understands the isolation that I have to go through to
get there. Um. She understands why you know, I suddenly
just added to move to Nashville, And she said, Okay,
she's a California board and raised person. Um. But said,
let's go And um, so you have to have somebody

(01:49:09):
who's on board. But I don't think that can happen
when you're in your twenties, because you don't know when
your twenties and know in your twenties where you're gonna
be in your forties and your fifties. You just don't know.
And sorry, you have to have somebody who goes along
for the ride. Okay, let's go back to Nashville. At
the top, you talked about being a Jew in Nashville.
We have the whole Kanye self immolation. We have Dave

(01:49:34):
Chappelle talking about Jews on Saturday Night Live. We're recording.
This is only a couple of days ago, and you
wrote a piece about this, So give me your take.
I could go deeper, but you know exactly what I'm
talking about, Ah, Dave Chappelle, the normalization of anti Semitism,

(01:49:54):
Thank you so much. Sarcasm by the way, UM, let's
since I'm not a religious person. Um, most Jewish people
I know are not. But culturally we are bound food
where we're from, the way we talk, the way we think.

(01:50:19):
You know, we're bound together through this culture. There's only
but fourteen million of us on the planet. Um. But
shocking news anti Semitism. There's nothing new. It's been around forever,
thousands of years. UM. Every hundred years, history repeats itself.

(01:50:41):
Look at the Spanish Inquisition, look at the programs we
can keep going. When I did that one of those
twenty three and me things was unbelievable. It was a
map from Tunisia and Morocco to Portugal, to Spain, to
France to Italy, belong all the way across to Croatia,
straight up through you know, Austria, Hungary, Germany, Poland straight

(01:51:04):
up to Finland which used to be Russia. That's a
map of people fleeing, you know. Yeah, my kids said,
oh my god, are we French? Well we probably were
for twenty years or a hundred years. I have no
freaking idea. So here we are again. Did we think
that in ninety three through that that was the end

(01:51:27):
of it? No way. So here we are with the
current normalization of anti Semitism, the hatred that spews from
the mouths of celebrities, politicians and just regular people. And

(01:51:50):
I never thought, probably none of us ever thought in
our lifetimes that we would be sitting here defending it
like our relatives. Did you know we're more than a
generation or two since World War Two. I've got a huge, wonderful,
loving family in Israel. Secular family lives in Tel Aviv.

(01:52:11):
I'm a liberal Zionist. None of us are bb people.
We don't believe in settlements, we're not right wingers, were
not religious. We don't spit it people when they walk
down the streets. By the way, that's the majority of
tel Aviv. We believe in rights. We believe in gay rights,
we believe in equal women rights. We believe in equal
rights for Arabs and everyone. Um, and here we are

(01:52:36):
being hated again. We are not Israeli politics. I am
not American politics. Tom York said it so well. I
started an organization ten years ago with David Renzer called
Creative Community for Peace that was about using music to
build bridges, not through boycott, where you use music to

(01:52:58):
bring people apart. I and the one thing that a
Palestinian and an Israeli kid might have in common is Rihanna.
For God's sake, Let's try to get bands to go
to Tel Aviv and then go somewhere in the Arab world.
Let's try to have music be the bridge. Elton John
gets that. Lots of artists gets that, gets that, Lady

(01:53:19):
Gaga gets that, Donna gets that. The list goes on. Um.
I was. I felt this rise in anti Semitism, not
just by through the organization, the nonprofit that I started
with David, But I see the stats. I see what's
happened in the last two three years. I heard Jews

(01:53:42):
will not replace us, just like you heard it. They
were taking down rightly so, taking down Confederate statues, and
they were marching, yelling, about Jews. So you see this,
I asked the question, you know, a couple of years ago,

(01:54:03):
when did we as Jewish people stop being a minority?
Because we are a minority. I'm actually in the middle
of reading a book. When did Jewish people start becoming white?
Because are we really white? You know? Sure? Okay, you
we can we we we can get away with it.
But remember that map I told you Tunisia, Morocco, all

(01:54:24):
that stuff. I bet you I had a lot of
relatives that didn't have this skin color. And then if
you trace it back two thousand years, I guarantee you
I had relatives that didn't have a skin color. So
why are we suddenly hated again? Or have we just
always been hated and it's just coming out? I said, yes,
I'm gonna get political here. You know. One of the
things that Trump did was when I lived in New York.

(01:54:49):
Remember um, when we lived in New York, so many
of us, and we come home at night after a
day at work, and we turn into lights and all
the cockroaches ran back in the cabinets. So Trump, by
not by by supporting the Jews, will not replace us
group in Charlottesville gave permission for the cabin for the

(01:55:11):
cockroaches to stay out and not have to run back
in the cabinet. My point is the cockroaches were always there.
This is a racist country. Come on, look at the
history of this country. It's a racist country. So anyway
to answer your question, Pittsburgh synagogues shootings, Kanye West, he don't.

(01:55:39):
Don't people who have voices and celebrity have some level
of responsibility, you know, for him to say death not
death death, con don't Kanye is meaningless. It's what he
has create, helped to create. Kanye didn't invent anti Semitism,

(01:56:03):
but he furthered it along because of those folks that
dropped all those pamphlets in Los Angeles and stood on
the bridges and the people that stood on the bridges
with of Jacksonville with the signs that said Kanye is right.
And then Dave Chappelle what he did on Saturday. I'm
a fan of Dave Chappelle. I believe, you know, I
could believe in complete free speech, but don't normalize hatred.

(01:56:30):
I'm very concerned, deeply, deeply, deeply concerned about the relationship
between the Jewish community and the Black community. We grew
up arm in arm. Literally, my best friends were Jewish
and they were Black. There was this commonality between us.
We felt we had been put through hell in our
histories and we're survivors, and yet people are I don't

(01:56:57):
like what I see in the last couple of years,
the riff between these communities that should be there. Yeah,
I mean, sure we know Jews were there when Martin
Luther King crossed the bridge. I get it, and but
at the end of the day, the relationship is so
deeply important for both communities, brotherhood and sisterhood, and it's damaged.

(01:57:22):
And I'm very concerned about that. To be honest with you,
I would expect that from rednecks living somewhere in this
country or other whatever the equivalent is in Europe, people
who are ignorant and poorly informed. And I think that
Jews run this or Jews run that. I haven't gotten
a call, by the way, if there is a conspiracy conspiracy.

(01:57:43):
Nobody called me about running a bank or running I mean,
it's unbelievable. But I'm mostly and deeply concerned about the
riff between the Jewish and the Black community. Additionally, and
I saw this has come up lately, this is not
original thought. But one of the things is that Dave
Chappelle said that really deeply offended me, was using the
term jew versus Jewish. This is an original thought to me.

(01:58:09):
I think Michael Rappaport or somebody said this recently. But
if you're Jewish, you can refer to me as a
jew um. But if you're not, we are a part
of a Jewish community. It is condescending. I'm saying this
for anybody who will listen to me hear me. It's condescending,
it's degrading. And I do not believe somebody says the

(01:58:33):
Jews says that naively without meaning some level of anger
anti Semitism attached to it. I think, you know, we
deserve to take that phrase back. We really do, and
I think we need to be loud now. The one
thing that has changed in the last hundred years is

(01:58:56):
that we have the ability to not just be out,
but we have. We didn't have Israel, and again, remember
where I started here. I'm a liberal Zionist, but my
family in ninety one didn't have an army, and for that,
I'm really proud of Israel. I do not like a

(01:59:18):
lot of things the government does. I don't like a
lot of things the American government does. Trust me, I'm
a bleeding liberal. But what's going on? A friend of mine,
who is the director of Creative Community for Peace, said
it really well to me recently. Suddenly, in the last
couple of years, Jews are getting squeeted out, squeezed out
from the extreme right and the extreme left. When did

(01:59:42):
Berkeley or U see I I just came from Irvine.
Suddenly that's a hotbed of anti Semitism. So now we've
got both sides, so we better do something about this.
We gotter be loud. Guess what, everyone. We don't control Hollywood,
guess whatever you and we don't control all the things

(02:00:02):
that they say we control. We're smart. We're smart because
our parents believed in education. That's why we're smart. That's
why doctors are Jewish, doctors can be Indian, doctors can
be Asian doctors cannot be in some of those. But
our parents pushed on us what their parents weren't able
to do. Education, Work your ass off, sleep as little

(02:00:28):
as you can. That's why some of us might be successful.
Not all of us are successful. You know, we're a
part of the fabric of this world, and I can't
imagine that we're gonna let anti Semitism rise to the
heights again in this century as it did in the

(02:00:48):
last and the one before that and the one before that.
So Kanye West started a load of ship, you know,
just malignant stupidity. I understand if he has mental illness,
but that's not an excuse right now, because he has influence,

(02:01:11):
significant influence, as do many other people right now. Marjorie
Taylor Green, are you kidding me? This is one of
the reasons why anti Semitary people really believe that we
had lasers. I'm still waiting for a jet pack, God
damn it to get me across town a laser. It's

(02:01:35):
amazing how gullible, ignorant, and hateful so many people are.
So I want to be very vocal about it. I
don't want to be one of these complacent American Jewish people,
just like the German complacent Jewish people of two where

(02:01:56):
they were more proud to be German than they were
to be Jewish. That didn't get them far. So I'm angry,
angry in a good way, and I don't know, you know,
I had a experience in Nashville where I've never had

(02:02:17):
poor experiences with anything, you know, anti Semitic wise, I
got thrown out of an uber car in June or
July because I was talking to our head of Swedish
studios on non Jew by the way, I can say
jee because I'm Jewish. And I guess the uber driver
heard me talking to him about how I was going
to visit my family in Israel. And the guy pulled

(02:02:37):
over and says, get out of the car, you fucking jew,
you dirty jew. What I mean? First, for me, I've
read about this, it's actually happening. And I said, excuse me.
I mean, I was shaking and I was shocked. I
wanted to jump out of the car and go let's go, buddy.
But he said to me, if you don't get in
the car right now, I'm gonna get out and pummel
your face into the ground. And I believed him, so

(02:03:00):
I got out of the car. I walked up the
I walked down to my house, which is a few down.
I walked up this gigantic hill I live in live
On and I said to my wife, Um, it's time.
And I know that sounds dramatic, and I told her
the story and I said it's time not to leave.
Not that you know six year ago thing where so

(02:03:23):
many of us said if Trump wins weren't moving to Canada. No,
this time it was we need to get a passport
somewhere else just in case. I'm not saying I'm going
to move now. How am I going to get a
British or a Canadian or another passport? But I can

(02:03:43):
get an Israeli passport that law of return, So I
can't believe I'm doing that. I'm doing that and I
hope to never have to use it. Um my entire
family and as real again, this secular liberal freethinking, why

(02:04:05):
you were we why are we building settlements? How how
do we create a two state solution? Huge amount of
beautiful family that I have are all there because one
person survived the Holocaust and he created this incredible family.
And my cousins and my relatives married people who I

(02:04:26):
consider to be my sisters and brothers, even though we're
not quote blood relatives. And they come from one person
who now at eighties something, when she was seven, saw
her father shot in front of her in Paris, and
they fled to the south of France and got hidden
from house to house to house until they could get

(02:04:48):
to what was going to become Israel. And I'm sitting
here in front of people who are survivors because of
horrible things, and I never thought we'd be here having
to talk about this again. But that's naive. Um So.

(02:05:10):
I I just have no tolerance for anti Semitism, by
the way, just like I have no tolerance for racism, misogyny,
anybody who speaks out against the LGBTQ community. We were
raised as Jewish people to stand up for everyone who
is being oppressed or hurt or or or anything, anybody

(02:05:33):
who's being bullied upon. That's how we were raised. And
I would just hope in this century that these other
communities this time will stand up for us too. Okay, Now, Seinfeld,
legendarily George was Jewish and they changed his religion because

(02:05:57):
they didn't want the show to be Jewish. To what
degree with the people in the music industry who are
Jewish afraid to stand up and own it, and what
could be done in terms of the communities we touch? Yeah,
I mean, I I loved that George thing you just said.
It's very similar, like I said, to what happened a hundred.

(02:06:19):
You know, eighty, I should say eighty years ago in Germany.
You know, if we just assimilate, if we just bury ourselves,
pretend we're not Jewish. Don't go to don't go to synagogue,
or only go once a year, but don't tell anybody
go to work after you go to synagogue. Russia's Shanna,
you know. Don't wear it on your sleeve, don't wear
a higher on your neck, don't put a massos on

(02:06:41):
your door, because the ups guy will know you're Jewish.
Let's try to just fall in line. Guess what, you're Jewish.
They know you're Jewish. They hate you anyway. My grandmother
used to say that to me, they hate us because
we're Jewish. She got fired for her job at eight
T and T in whatever, the thirties of the forties

(02:07:02):
because she took off for Young Kippoor and they said, wait,
you're Jewish. Don't come back. And so, yeah, we can assimilate,
we can hide, we can become a part of all
the white nss in America we want. But they know
you're Jewish, So why not be proud of it? You know,

(02:07:24):
I again, I say this again, that doesn't mean religious.
I'm not saying go to synagogue on Friday night. I'm
not an organized religion guy in any religion, by the way,
But your culture is which culture is. Okay, you are
who you are. So music business, hey, there's Jewish people

(02:07:49):
in it, there's non Jewish people in it. I've worked
for a lot of Jewish people in the music business.
I've worked for a lot of non Jewish people in
the music business. They didn't bring their Jewishness to the music.
They did bring their jewishness to the label. Okay, we
all maybe the office was a little emptier on Russia
Shaanna in New York. But guess what, that's not what

(02:08:11):
Dave Chappelle made that just heinous, asinine comment about I've
been to Hollywood and I'm gonna unfortunately paraphrase it. But
there's a lot of Jews in the business. Well, guess what.
New York has the biggest Jewish population in the world.
Jerusalem is the second Jewish biggest population in the world.

(02:08:32):
Los Angeles is the third biggest Jewish population in the world,
and Tel Aviv has the fourth. That's a population thing.
This isn't a control thing. So you know, I just
think Jewish people don't need to necessarily suddenly go all religious.

(02:08:54):
But you can't hide from who you are. Be proud
of it. I am. I'm proud for where I come from.
I'm proud from the cultural things that I've learned because
of it. You know, I'm I'm dead against some of
the politics that come out of Israel, particularly in this
up and coming regime BB part whatever, but I'm certainly

(02:09:15):
proud of the contributions that country has made. I'm really
proud of it. I have I have pride in that,
just like somebody who's from Ireland has pride and things
that come from there. People that are British have pride.
I have pride. I'm not gonna apologize for that, and
I'm not gonna hide. And if you hate me because
I'm Jewish, ego, funk yourself and be you just don't

(02:09:38):
know me. Been scapegoats forever and we're gonna be scapegoats
in a hundred years and three hundred years and five
hundre years. But for God's sake, can we at least
all suddenly have a voice. And I feel we need
to hide. I don't know if that answers your question,
but that's how I feel. Well, I you know, I
hope that a lot of people hear that, because normally

(02:10:00):
use your message good. So is the delivery certainly much
better than good? Now I knew you know, you flew
from so Cal over a couple of time zones to Nashville.
So I think we've come to the end of the
feeling we've known, even though we could talk for much
more time. But you've really been fantastic, Steve. I want
to thank you for taking the time unbelievable and thank you,

(02:10:24):
thank you, thank you. I'm so glad to reconnect with you.
I had such amazing memories of you and I sitting
across the dinner table together, and I remember wanting to
talk non stop with you, and I'm just so grateful.
I'm great. You know. That begs a couple more questions
that I want to ask you about you, But as
I say, that's it for today, Okay, fine, thank you

(02:10:49):
until next time. This is Bob left set